


Found Objects

by 221b_hound



Series: Princess for a Day [4]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Dress Up, M/M, No First Order, Techienician, alternative universe, awkward boys in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 16:28:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7721773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt the Radar Technician and Clan Techie are good with machines, not words. Yet in a disordered and unkind universe, they have found each other, and in their ways both awkward and sincere, they find a million ways to communicate their love to each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Found Objects

**Author's Note:**

> All aboard the Techienician train!! Wooooo-hoooooooooooo.
> 
> Fuck You Atlin Merrick, with all my love.

Techie’s mech-eyes weren’t his choice. He comes from an overcrowded planet, a city seething with people of all species. A city as poor as it is populous, and as dangerous as any in the universe.

Techie was claimed, against his will, by one of the larger crime clans for his prowess with computers, and then without asking they took his eyes and gave him these new ones. They made him a tool for their use, with great skill but no care.

The technology works beautifully of itself, interfacing fluidly with Techie’s neural network, from retina to cerebral cortex. But the metalwork, the casing itself, is not entirely compatible with his pale and tender skin. His mech-eyes are red-rimmed and he takes weekly meds to force his body to accept the implants.

His escape from the crime clan wasn’t entirely wise, and not at all easy. If the justice officer hadn’t exercised mercy he’d be with the clan still, not having anywhere else to go, or more likely in a prison cube.

But the officer held the literal and metaphorical door open for him, and Techie ran, right then wanting freedom from the clan more than he wanted safety. He got off-world, and then the Emperor's Fleet took him in for his skills both mech and innate.

It’s never occurred to Techie to have the mechanical eyes removed. He doesn’t want to be blind, and he likes how they’ve made it easier for him to be in concert with technology – eyes, brain, hands. But he does get sad, sometimes, about how the whole horrible business of gaining these eyes was about function. Before the mech-eyes, he was an incredibly good computer tech. He didn’t need the mech-eyes, really, but the clan wanted him to be more functional.

In compensation, he often looks for things that have no function at all. He makes little wire animals for no reason other than it’s fun.

And the thing he loves about Matt? Matt does not ever ask Techie to fix things, or do things, or be useful or anything like that. When they are together, Matt uses his big, broad hands to paint tenderness all over Techie’s body. It’s about how they feel and not how useful they are. If there’s a function at all, it’s pleasure, it’s connection, and the only demand is soft and sweet.

_Please. Please. Please let me show you that I love you._

*

Matt discovered Techie’s love of frippery in the strangest way.

It happened like this.

The Finalizer’s General Phasma has made her mark on her ship since the peace was formalized by treaty. Her ship is now partnered with one from the Republic, twin sentinals of the treaty. Phasma was hand-picked to command as a forward thinker: she is seen as _unique_ , which might be another way of saying _peculiar_. She certainly has very determined and… progressive beliefs when it comes to the health and safety of those under her command. The order in which she was born and raised – and with which she credits her great strength and skill – had very strict and scientific notions about the health of the mind and that of the body.

Phasma exercises every skerrick of leeway at her discretion in terms of food, exercise, health checks. She has authorized Techie’s weekly injections so they don't cost him a credit: she considers his skills that valuable. Every planetfall she ensures the quartermaster beings in fresh fruit and vegetables. Her crew are less delighted with the scheduled callisthenics and yoga sessions, but they’ve had worse commanders.

Matt and Techie had at this stage exchanged only a few glances, a few uncertain smiles that grew braver under the light of the other’s response. One or two words exchanged, mostly from Matt – clumsy lumps of words that made him feel stupid, but Techie only smiled like those lumps of coal were diamonds, like he saw through the static to the pure signal at Matt's heart.

That mealtime they were seated side by side, tentatively sure that communication was happening and mutual. On Techie’s tray was the usual selection of vat protein and gravy – he seemed suspicious of more natural foods that he’d never seen in that megacity in which he’d grown. Matt, more inclined to experiment, and fascinated by Phasma's charisma, had selected a salad with his standard issue protein; fresh produce from their last planetfall. Shreds of greens and purples and striated yellows, pale pink petals fringed in orange were scattered throughout; one clutch of petals still clustered as a flower.

Matt burrowed two big fingers into his meal, took the whole miraculous flower from among the shreds of a dish and shook the dressing from it. He pushed his glasses up his long nose with the heel of his hand and _peered_ at the flower, studying the unexpected details. He put the stem between his full lips and gently sucked away the dressing. He admired the flower with furrowed brow, thinking how it made him think of Techie, whom he longed to kiss. The flower, like Techie, was delicate and strong; beautiful beyond its function, an unlikely survivor to fetch up whole, or mostly so, for Matt’s own hands to touch; and lovely for its own sake.

Matt saw then how Techie looked at it; like a flower was an altogether novel thing; something as wondrous as a star – and on impulse he reached over with his big hand and gave that little flower to the man beside him.

“It’s like you,” he said, then shut his mouth on lumpy words that couldn’t explain _why_. He waited to be laughed at, and for this tentative communication to turn into static.

But Techie, expression enchanted, took the flower in his nimble fingers. He licked a smear of flavour from a petal and then put the stem behind his ear. And blushing, his lips curved in shy delight, his blue mech-eyes red-rimmed like petals, Techie said “Thanks.”

After the shift, Techie forsook his bed in a room shared with five others (he never knew how to sleep alone, so he always volunteered for the unwanted dorm billets). He went, on Matt’s shy invitation, to Matt’s solo quarters.

There, Matt’s abandoned unwieldy words in favour of deft fingers, strong hands, exploring mouth. Matt’s big hands caressed Techie like he was a flower, and his full lips sucked softly on fingers, toes, ears, nose, cock.  

Techie, who had joined the army because he didn’t know how to be without a thousand times a thousand people all around him, discovered he could feel both protected and strong with this one man. 

*

Matt’s a radar technician. That means he’s very, very good at sending signals to find far away and hidden things, and to relaying those signals to the places they need to be. For all his height and the broad, broad breadth of his shoulders, he can wriggle himself into some stupidly small places. On the other hand, sometimes he walks, large-footed, across comms arrays and conning towers while The Finalizer is in dock. For all the space above him and the size of the ship under his feet, he feels like a colossus when he is seeing to the eyes of his ship.

He’s very good at being a radar tech, but not so good with other kinds of communication. He has a head full of words – he loves the shape of them – but they somehow turn to thick dough or pliable lead in his mouth and fall out like stones, lifeless. In his head are supernovas, but on his lips are awkward silences and clumsy phrases.

Matt feels like Techie understands him anyway. It’s like they can communicate in all the other ways – with pulse rates and breaths and lips on skin and electrical impulses, brain to brain. All of them signals to find hidden and far away things in each other. All of them ways to say _I love you._

The thing Matt loves about Techie? Actually, there are dozens of things, and he can’t articulate a single one, though he’ll sit and watch Techie for hours. He loves the look of concentration on Techie’s face as he works, communing with the technology. He loves the sudden, brilliant smiles of happiness when Techie makes a little wire creature. He loves how Techie’s face looks so young and sweet when he’s asleep. He loves how, when the dreams trouble Techie – rarely now, but sometimes still – Matt’s deep voice saying _it’s all right, you’re safe_ will lead to a long, soft sigh, to Techie wriggling back, little spoon to Matt’s big, solid, wall-like spoon, and into pliable, boneless contentment.

Matt has never been anyone’s safe place before. It makes him feel like a king.

*

Matt sort of knows why Techie loves pretty, pointless things, but he also knows that reason isn’t important; only that he does. He feels proud that Techie trusts him enough that one day he greeted Matt home with his face all splashed with colour: pink on his cheeks and pale green on his eyelids, and bright bright red on his lips – and batted his ginger eyelashes at his tall, yellow-haired lover. Perhaps someone else would have felt the colours too bright, mismatched, not right, but Matt only saw Techie’s happy face, and he thought Techie was _beautiful_.

“You look like flowers,” he’d said.

Techie’s face bloomed joyful like a field of wildflowers in the sun.

Now, Matt makes it his mission to find silly, pretty, decorative things for Techie. Thinking of the copper wires that Techie turns into little animals, he finds discarded things that he thinks can be _made_ pretty.  There’s that handful of broken crystals from the secondary pulse cannon batteries. They had once hung in suspension in an acid bath, but washed clean now they sparkle in the light, refracting purple-red-orange. And there’s the jacket he found in the waste, the leather shredded, but it cleans up nicely. He weaves the strips of it together into a belt that will fit around Techie’s slender waist (and not at all around Matt’s thicker torso. Techie’s not small, but Matt feels huge beside him). That discarded insulating sheet, torn up the middle, is shiny silver on one side, fuzzy soft grey on the other. Matt likes the sound it makes in his hands, a crinkle-rustle that reminds him of dried leaves in the fall on the planet where he was born.

That night, Matt takes off his shoes (neatly they go, into the cupboard, with his uniform and his hazard vest) and brushes his thick yellow hair that won’t stay neat. He’s in black trousers, black shirt, off-duty fatigues. He wants Techie to shine without distraction, so he makes himself dark as he can.

He selects music for the entertainment unit, something soft and instrumental. The notes are measured and Matt likes the maths of them. He isn’t musical, really, but he loves the patterns of music like he loves the shape of the words in his head.

Matt has laid all the found treasures out on the bed when Techie comes off shift. The puzzled look on Techie’s face makes Matt feel suddenly stupid and lumpish. All this junk. Why would Techie think any of it was worth his time?

“It’s… pretty…” he tries to explain, holding the crystals in his big hands. They don’t look pretty. They look like the broken guts of a secondary pulse cannon battery. He starts to close his fist.

Techie pokes his fingers into the shattered crystals in Matt’s palm, swirls a slow circle in them. The plain and functional light in the ceiling of their room catches on the facets.

Purple-red-orange sparkles in the well of Matt’s hand.

Techie breathes captivated contentment warmly over the crystals and Matt’s palm.

“Show me,” he says, and when he looks at his Matt, he face is starting to bloom joyful already.

Galvanised – Techie’s face is like flowers but his smile is like a sun to Matt – Matt uses Techie's spray for his lovely hair, which he uses when he's painting his face, then he combs the crystals through it with his fingers. Suddenly Techie’s long red locks are shimmering, streaked with crystals.

Techie looks in the mirror, his fingers hovering above the sparkling crown of hair, and joy blooms brighter.

Matt shakes out the sheet of silver cloth and drapes it over Techie’s shoulders. It falls like a robe down his body, shiny side out. The crystals reflect, shimmering, at the shoulder.  Techie smooths his hands down it and he giggles at the sound it makes.

“Wait!” he urges before Matt can do any more. Techie kicks off his shoes and then his trousers. Matt lifts the sheet long enough for Techie to discard his jacket (he throws it on the floor and wire, tools, baubles, fall out of the pockets). The silver sheet settles on Techie’s shoulders again, over his black undershirt, which reaches to the top of Techie’s thighs. His long, pale legs are faintly freckled and dusted in red hair.

“Okay,” says Techie, and he holds his arms wide so that Matt can fix the woven leather around his waist

Matt stands back and examines the result. Red shimmery hair and the column of Techie’s pale throat; black shirt a V of contrast surrounded by the rustling silver robe. The dark leather belt holding the gap closed, but Techie’s black underpants are visible as the sheet splits apart again at his hips, below the leather. The bulge of Techie’s quiescent cock is an enticing bump under the hem of the shirt, between Techie’s white thighs.

Techie doesn’t need make up because his cheeks are flushed pink at the way Matt looks at him, like he’s precious.

Techie saw a vid of a princess once, from Naboo, all done up in paint and sculpted hair and layered gowns. While he knows he doesn’t look a bit like her, he also knows that he feels like that now. He feels like a princess: revered and honoured and decorated to demonstrate the high esteem in which Matt holds him.

Without thinking, he curtseys, then looks away, blushing, feeling shy and silly.

“You’re like a prince,” Matt says slowly. That happens sometimes. They speak through signals, a wordless radar, the ping of computer language, trading understanding without speaking.

Techie presses his fingers to Matt’s face. To the moles and freckles on that pale cheek, a constellation of beauty spots. Techie’s lips are parted and every breath exhales want.

“You’re mine,” he says, and in case it’s not clear, he says, “My prince.”

Matt’s lopsided smile is Techie’s reward. Matt ducks his head, pushed his glasses up his nose with his thumb, then looks up through the lenses at Techie’s blue mech-eyes reading everything about him. And he likes it, does Matt. He likes it that his signals are read so clearly by those eyes, and understood so readily by that mind. He feels blessed.

Techie reaches out to take Matt’s big hand in his. The music is still playing in their little room, and Techie takes Matt’s other hand and draws him close.

“Dance with me,” he says. (He has a memory, of his mother and father, dancing. It looked nice.)

And so they dance. The radar tech and the computer technician, sending signals. They aren’t elegant and there isn’t much room. Mostly they hold each other and rock carefully side to side, not even entirely in time to the music. But it’s beautiful.

And then their lips meet and they sup love from each other’s tongues. Matt’s hands smooth down the crackling silver flowing down Techie’s back, and scoop under Techie’s bottom, and lift. Techie wraps his legs around Matt’s waist, the tails of the makeshift silver robe trailing to the floor, the bulge in his black pants more pronounced as it rubs against Matt’s abdomen.

Matt carries Techie to bed and kisses and touches him all over, and then Techie strips Matt bare and returns the worship. He strips off his pants but keeps on his found regalia. He climbs all over Matt, sprawled underneath him on the bed, kissing and fondling and loving. Between them, they make Techie slick and open, and then in all his crystalline, silver, woven leather finery, Techie rides his big-handed, big-waisted, big-cocked darling until they both shout and come and laugh, and then curl up, dizzy, panting, joyful, among the now-sparkling sheets to sleep.

*

Next planet-leave, Matt takes Techie to a park outside the city. Techie says he hasn't seen trees, plural, all standing up together. He's curious.

Techie is wary at first. Trees are still a novelty and therefore an unassessed danger to him.

But when Matt is distracted by a cluster of little orange flowers, Techie sees something that alters everything. When Matt looks up, Techie is gone.

“Techie? _Techie?”_ He’s not alarmed, really, but he doesn’t like the idea of Techie wandering away and feeling unsafe among these trees he doesn't trust.

“Here!”

Matt follows the voice – not uneasy at all, but bursting with surprised confidence – until he finds Techie.

Sitting up a tree.

Techie is grinning at him from the fork where a thick bough extends from a much thicker trunk. He’s not high up, and the branches are wide and sturdy. Techie, who climbs scaffolding like a monkey, lays along the bough, cheek to the smooth bark, arms and legs wrapped around the branch.

He gazes down at Matt and says. “It’s like you.” He pats the branch, so that Matt gets his meaning.

Without words, the signal flashes one to the other.

To Techie, this tree is Matt. Big. Beautiful. Its roots, like Matt’s outsized feet, are not clumsy but an anchor. His big arms and hands reach high like branches, sheltering and strong. This tree communicates, earth to sky. It’s not nimble, it’s not silver-tongued, it’s not delicate but it’s beautiful. Big and lush and beautiful.

Matt climbs up to sit behind Techie in the crook of the tree, and Techie leans back against Matt’s sturdy body. Matt wraps his arms around Techie’s waist and holds him steady.

“I like trees,” Techie decides.

Matt kisses the side of his neck. “I like flowers,” he says.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [Allmannerofsomethings has drawn Techie with a flower in his hair! ](https://allmannerofsomethings.tumblr.com/post/148754345779/you-look-like-flowers-pencil-drawing-in-my) <3 to you!!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Mechanical Eyes Can't Cry](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11253024) by [DaisyFairy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaisyFairy/pseuds/DaisyFairy)
  * [Mechanical Eyes Can't Cry](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11253024) by [DaisyFairy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaisyFairy/pseuds/DaisyFairy)




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